-The Indian Express   A day after the World Bank suggested that India should shrink its public distribution system (PDS) in favour of more cash transfers, Planning Commission Member (Agriculture) Abhijit Sen told select mediapersons it would be “stupid to abolish PDS”. A World Bank review of India’s social sector programmes titled “Social protection for a changing India”, commissioned by the Planning Commission, said though the PDS costs just 1 per cent...

Environmentalist Ashish Kothari was a member of the Inter-Ministerial Committee (constituted by Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) and Ministry of Tribal Affairs) to review the implementation of the Forest Rights Act (FRA). The committee, headed by Dr N C Saxena submitted its report recently to the Central government. During the course of its work the committee visited Odisha to assess the performance of the FRA there, particularly in the...

After getting a earful about the proposed Areva nuclear reactor from disgruntled farmers in Jaitapur, Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh heard a sobering assessment of the Areva's Finnish reactor project — which is running four years behind schedule, with cost overruns hitting 2.7 billion euros — from that country's nuclear regulator. In a presentation made to Mr. Ramesh and a visiting Indian delegation in Finland earlier this week, Finnish regulator STUK...

-News One   Though India’s social sector spending is higher than many other developing countries, one of its flagship welfare programs — the public distribution system (PDS) — is fraught with leakages, a World Bank report said Wednesday. The PDS scheme, which consumes around one percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) and covers upto 25 percent of the poor households, has had limited success, as only 41 percent of the...

Though the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has prioritized enrolling people who have no valid proof of their identity and worked out a mechanism called the "introducer based verification system", it came to light in camps organized in the state that there are few takers for this system. An authorized person with a valid UID number can introduce a person with no documentary evidence. Commissioner NREGA, Ajay Kumar Singh, who...